Legends of the Old West - REVOLUTION Ep. 3 | “Devils From Infernal Regions”

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

After four years of fighting, the war in the northern colonies settles into a stalemate. It rages in the southern colonies, but the American southern army suffers the worst calamities of the war. An army of frontiersmen known as the Overmountain Men deliver a spark of hope for the American cause at the Battle of Kings Mountain. Then, an American column led by Brigadier General Daniel Morgan stuns a British column at the Battle of Cowpens. The Americans finally gain the momentum, and they ride it to an historic conclusion. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year. Someone else said that last year too. A round of Jameson, Ginger, and Lime arrives at a table. Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball.

Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. How did Jameson to your match day lineup? Jameson, it's what you bring. Please enjoy our products responsibly. The first ever all-electric 2026 Subaru Trail Seeker is the EV for the Trail Obsessed, with up to 444 kilometers on a full charge and DC fast charging from 10 to 80% in about 30 minutes in ideal conditions. Plus, ample ground clearance and symmetrical all-wheel drive make the 2026 Trail Seeker the most capable EV Subaru has ever built.

Test drive it at your local Subaru dealer or visit Subaru.ca. Major Patrick Ferguson came from old Scottish stock, which was why the threat he made in September of 1780 against the mountain folk on the western edge of the colonies was strange and ironic. Ferguson had served with the British Army in the European theater of the Seven Years War, and then in the West Indies, and then he sailed to North America to serve in the British main army under Commander-in-Chief William Howe. Ferguson was injured at the Battle of Brandywine outside Philadelphia in September 1770. and when he returned to the army a year later, he had a new commander. Right after the British main army captured Philadelphia, the British Northern Army suffered a shocking defeat at the Battle of Saratoga in central New York. The entire British Northern Army was gone.

Most were captured, but during its five-month campaign, more than 2,000 had been killed or badly wounded. Worse yet, for the British, the American victory at Saratoga persuaded the French to officially join the war. the war as an American ally. The French had been sending supplies and money since the beginning, but on February 6, 1778, the two nations made the alliance official, and the alliance changed everything.

After two seasons of battlefield success, but with no real progress toward winning the war, British commander-in-chief William Howe resigned his commission. Parliament promoted Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton to commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America. With the impending introduction of French troops and ships, Clinton and Parliament needed to change the strategy for the war. Britain suddenly faced threats throughout its colonies in the Western Hemisphere. The British needed to reinforce their troops on islands in the Caribbean and in Western Florida, and with the British Army spread so thin, it couldn't hold Philadelphia and New York. In June 1778, after nine months of occupation,

the British evacuated Philadelphia and began the move to consolidate their forces at New York. After that, new commander-in-chief Sir Henry Clinton planned to send the new commander of the Southern Department, Major General Charles Lord Cornwallis, to Georgia to invade the southern colonies again. Clinton and Cornwallis had tried and failed to capture Charleston, South Carolina, two years earlier. Now, failure was not an option. The British were confident they would receive more support from loyalists in the southern colonies than they had in the northern colonies. With the bulk of the war effort shifting south, a huge portion of the effort dependent on those loyalists to volunteer in big numbers to support the regular army. And that was where Major Patrick

Ferguson came in. Ferguson was in charge of recruiting and training an army of loyalist militiamen in the southern colonies. He successfully recruited 1,000 loyalists for his militia army, but then he made a stake which would come back to haunt him. He threatened the homes and families of the people who lived in the mountains of Western Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Most of those people were from rugged and mountainous regions of Scotland and Ireland. They wanted to get away from the British monarchy, so they moved to the colonies. Then they wanted to get away from the cities and politics of the eastern parts of the colonies, so they moved as far west as possible into mountainous terrain they found familiar.

They followed their own rules and wanted no government supervision. They had little interest in a war between people on the other side of the mountain and the British Army. But then Major Ferguson sent a messenger into the mountains with an ultimatum. The message was to stay away from the British Army or Ferguson would, quote, march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waist with fire and sword. The Highlanders and the Irish had been fighting the British for 700. years. The people in the mountains on the western edge of the colonies were descended from those fighters, and many were fairly recent arrivals from the old countries. So it was strange and ironic

that Major Ferguson would expect them to stand down when threatened by a British ultimatum to destroy everything they had built. As soon as they heard the threat, men left their homes and gathered in militias, from Southern Virginia to Northern Georgia, with one purpose in mind, to hunt down and kill Major Patrick Ferguson. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling an American frontier story in honor of America's 250th birthday. It's the story of the six battles which defined the Revolutionary War and saved American

hopes for independence. This is episode three. Devils from Infernal Regents After the surrender of the British Northern Army in October 1777, the British Main Army in October 1777, the British Main Army in Philadelphia captured two forts outside the city and then made one final push to destroy the American Maine Army before winter set in. Again, George Washington would not allow his army to be drawn into a battle that wasn't his choosing. In December, Washington and the American Maine Army settled into its winter camp

at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The winter was long and brutal for the American troops, but it was also transformative. A former Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, joined the American Army and spent the winter providing vital training to the Continental Soldiers. When they broke camp in June 1778, they were new fighters, but they would do very little fighting in the north

from that point forward. On June 18th, British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Clinton, led the British evacuation of Philadelphia. The British Army marched 65 miles up to the shores of Sandy Hook Bay in New Jersey to load onto ships to sail to Manhattan Island. Part of the American Army reoccupied Philadelphia, while the rest chased the British Army and fought their only engagement of the year, the Battle of Monmouth.

The battle was a mess. The early part was chaotic and confusing, and it spiraled into an artillery duel which fizzled out at sunset. Both armies made camp, and during the night, the British quietly stole away from the battlefield. They put distance between themselves and the Americans, and they completed their journey to New York with no further action. By midsummer, with the British Army back in New York,

its leaders went to work planning the invasion of the southern colonies. In the American Army, Commander-in-Chief George Washington made a series of leadership changes. During the failed attack on the British at Monmouth Courthouse, Washington had gotten into a shouting match with his second in command, Major General Charles Lee. Lee had a mixed war record, and he had always been an outspoken critic of Washington. The experience at Monmouth was the final straw. Washington removed Lee from command and all but pushed him out of the army. Next, Washington made Major General Benedict Arnold, military governor of Philadelphia.

Arnold was one of the heroes of the battles at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights. the previous year, and he was still recovering from the gunshot wound to the leg he had sustained at Bemis Heights. He had been Horatio Gates second in command of the Northern Army during the battle at Freeman's Farm, but the two generals had argued fiercely after the battle because Gates gave no credit to Arnold when Gates wrote his reports to Congress. Gates had replaced Arnold as second in command with Major General Benjamin Lincoln. With the falling out between Gates and Arnold and Arnold's wounded leg, Washington placed Arnold in charge of Philadelphia. There, Arnold's anger at Gates and Congress would harden into disillusion.

He would become close with prominent loyalists, and he would eventually defect to become a general in the British Army. But while Arnold took his first small steps toward treason, Washington kept Gates in command of the Northern Department, and he placed Benjamin Lincoln in command of the Southern Department. Lincoln traveled down to Charleston, South Carolina to begin preparation for the British invasion everyone knew was coming. As the colors of the leaves changed in the north and the weather turned colder, British commander and chief Sir Henry Clinton sent the 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser's Highlanders to the south to begin the campaign.

They captured the port city of Savannah, Georgia on December 28th, and moved inland. They captured Augusta, Georgia one month later. and then made initial advances into South Carolina, which would become ground zero for two years of heavy fighting. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old.

You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. After three years of fighting in the North, very little happened in 1778. It ended up being a reset year. 1779 was the in-between year.

There were scattered engagements in the north. Some were consequential, but none were major battles. In the West, American Major General John Sullivan led an expedition against the Iroquois Confederacy in New York and Pennsylvania. In the south, there were small engagements in Georgia and South Carolina early in the year as the British Army expanded its control in the region. And the American Southern Army, commanded by Major General Benjamin, Benjamin Lincoln tried and failed to retake Savannah with a combined force of American and French

troops during a month-long siege from September to October. Lincoln and the Southern Army retreated back to their headquarters at Charleston, South Carolina. Spain declared war on Great Britain, thereby becoming an ally of France and the U.S. The following year, Spanish ships would attack British targets all along the Gulf of Mexico and further strain British resources. But it was the year after that, 1780, when the war raged in South Carolina like it had in New York in 1776 and 1777. And it was there in May of 1780 that it looked like the American war effort was doomed for the third time. The cause had seemed lost at Christmas of 1776, and the Americans had narrowly avoided disaster by winning timely victories at Saratoga in 1777.

But neither of those dark times were as bad as the twin catastrophes suffered in South Carolina in 1780. In December 1779, the British had captured Savannah, Georgia, with an army of nearly 14,000 soldiers. Three months later, in March of 1780, the British Southern Army marched north to Charleston, South Carolina. George Washington had been sending units from the American Main Army to reinforce the Southern Army at Charleston, South Carolina.

Carolina. But the problem for the Americans was they had to walk most of the way, more than 500 miles, from Pennsylvania to South Carolina. And even with the additional units, the American Southern Army was half the size of the British force. Worse yet, the earliest arrivals from the north showed up just in time to become trapped in Charleston. The British surrounded the city, and British warships blocked Charleston Harbor. The British pounded Charleston with continuous cannon fire. One month later, on May 12, 1780, General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered almost the entire American Southern Army, 5,000 soldiers to the British. It was the largest American surrender of the war, and it was a disaster. With the capture of Charleston, the British

now had the foothold they needed to try to win the war through the southern colonies. Commander-in-chief Sir Henry Clinton sailed back up to New York and left General Charles Lord. Cornwallis in command of the Southern Department. Cornwallis made immediate plans to move inland. Two weeks later, a British unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Bannister Tarleton ventured into the interior of South Carolina and decimated a regiment of the Continental Army at the Battle of the Waxaws. The British pushed inland and secured roads, settlements, and outposts.

Meanwhile, the Americans rebuilt the Southern Army as fast as possible. The heart of the new Southern Army, Army became the final units from the main army who had been traveling south. About 2,000 of the Maine Army's best soldiers, veterans from Maryland and Delaware who had fought all over the north, arrived in Virginia in early June to discover that Charleston had fallen and the Southern Army was gone. But they continued south and met up with the new commander of the Southern Department, General Horatio Gates.

Congress transferred Gates from command of the Northern Department, command of the Southern Department without telling George Washington, and Gates spent July and the first half of August cobbling together a new Southern Army. The second Southern Army fought just one engagement, the Battle of Camden. On August 16th, 1780, outside the small town of Camden, South Carolina, General Cornwallis and a British column of 2,200 soldiers clashed with the American Southern Army of 4,000 soldiers. The Americans had the larger army, but they had a bad mix of soldiers. One side of the American line was anchored by the hardened veterans from Maryland and Delaware.

The other side was manned by brand-new recruits, militiamen from Virginia and North Carolina. Directly across the battlefield from the raw recruits were the feared Scottish Highlanders of the British Army. The Highlanders smashed the militiamen and turned the battle into a route. Over the course of a single morning, the second American Southern Army was gone. Most of the Second American Southern Army scattered to the four winds after the Battle of Camden. About 700 of the 4,000 soldiers were captured and about 250 were killed. Those who escaped and wanted to keep fighting hiked up to American bases in North Carolina. For the British, with the elimination of a second American Southern Army in three months,

the conquest of South Carolina was essentially complete and the road to North Carolina was wide open. But instead of moving north immediately, General Cornwallis stayed in Camden for three weeks. All along Cornwallis's March inland from Charleston to Camden, his western flank had been harassed by bands of guerrilla fighters from the mountains and woodland areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The British column guarding the western flank was the loyalist militia army commanded by Major Patrick Ferguson. Three days after the Battle of Camden, three groups of colonial militiamen under colonels Elijah Clark from Georgia, James Williams from South Carolina, and Isaac Shelby from Tennessee, fought and won a minor engagement against a small loyalist force.

After the fight, Ferguson in his column chased the colonial militia units, but the colonial militiamen vanished into the Appalachian Mountains. At that point, Ferguson let his frustration get the better of him, and he issued his infamous ultimatum. He swore he would lay waste to the homes of the militiamen and hang their leaders if they attacked the British Army again. He probably should have known the threat would have the opposite effect. Instead of scaring the frontiersmen into submission, the threat galvanized them. Over the course of 10 days, militia groups up and down the western frontier from Virginia to Georgia, joined together in a common purpose to kill Major Patrick Ferguson. In the last week of September 1780,

Colonel Benjamin Cleveland and Major Joseph Winston mustered county militias in North Carolina. They rode south to a rendezvous point called Quaker Meadows in modern-day Morganton, North Carolina. On the other side of the Appalachian Mountains, Colonel William Campbell led a militia group south from Abingdon, Virginia, as they rode down through the northeast corner of the future state of Tennessee, they made up with militia units led by Colonel Isaac Shelby,

Colonel John Severe, and Major Charles McDowell at a spot called Sycamore Shoals. Two days later, the growing army started to cross the mountains in two inches of snow. On September 30th, the army rode down out of the mountains and united with the North Carolina units at Quaker Meadows. The men from over the mountains, who would be dubbed Overman, mountain men, camped for two days to rest and dry out. The newly combined army moved south again on October 2nd. Three days later, a group from Georgia led by Major William Candler and another from North

Carolina led by Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Hambright and Major William Chronicle joined the army. They continued to track Major Ferguson's loyalist militia column as it protected the western flank of Cornwallis' army. Cornwallis had finally marched. 70 miles north from Camden, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina. On the evening of October 6th, the over-mountain men camped in a big field known as Cow Pins in South Carolina, just below the border with North Carolina.

Cow Pins was a literal name. It was a large open space which farmers used to collect and sort their cattle. In other words, it was a cow pen. On the night of October 6th, it was a campground. South Carolina militia groups led by Colonel James Williams, Colonel William Hill, and Colonel Edward Lacey joined the Army to bring its full strength to 2,000 frontiersmen. The Army learned that Ferguson's column was camped on the fortified hilltop of Kings Mountain, about 25 miles straight east of Cowpenes.

The commanders of the militia groups voted to give William Campbell from Virginia, overall command of the upcoming mission. Collectively, they chose 900 of the most capable fighters for the attack. At dawn the next day, they rode toward Kings Mountain. 900 fighters and 12 commanders of the Frontier Army lit out at dawn on October 7, 1780. By mid-afternoon, they had reached the base of King's Mountain. Kings Mountain was actually two connected hills, which rose about 60 feet above the area around them. They were shaped like a handle and frying pan, with a long, narrow hill.

hill leading to a wider circular hill. The area was heavily forested, but Ferguson's loyalist column had cut down some of the trees on the hilltops to build crude fortifications. That afternoon, the frontiersmen army completely surrounded the hills. Some stayed on their horses, while others dismounted and moved up on foot. They crept through the trees on the slopes of the hills and waited as long as they dared before opening fire. Their commanders had told them to act independently. Let each of you be your own officer and do the very best you can. The plan was simple, attack from all sides, and fight until the battle was won. William Campbell, the overall commander, told his men to, shout like hell and fight like the devil. At three o'clock, they launched the assault.

The militias of Isaac Shelby, John Severe, William Candler, and William Campbell attacked the loyalist units on the narrow hill and drove them back to the main camp on the rounded hill. A loyalist militiamen said later that the over-mountain men looked terrifying as they screamed out of the trees. Devils from the infernal regions, the man called them, and he described them as, tall, raw-boned and sinewy with long matted hair. The frontiersmen ducked behind trees and dodged around rocks as they stormed the narrow hill and pushed the loyalists back to the main camp.

At the main camp on the rounded hill, the same thing was happening. The frontiersmen surged up three sides of the hill. Early in the surge, a loyalist militiamen shot and killed one of the commanders, Major William Chronicle. But that was where the lack of a typical command structure worked in the frontiersmen's favor. When a commander went down, the fighters kept attacking. They didn't wait for orders or retreat because they didn't know what to do next. Every man had been told to act independently, and he did. In Major Ferguson's camp, his men had been surprised, but they rallied.

They beat back several attacks with musket fire and then charged with bayonets. The loyalists were slowly losing the battle, but they were not being overrun. They put up stiff resistance, even as the battle looked increasingly unwinnable. And then, the bottom fell out. Major Patrick Ferguson displayed the fearlessness of a good officer. He stayed on his horse, with a sword in one hand and a whistle. in the other. He blew the whistle to issue commands to his men so that he could be heard over the non-stop sounds of shouting and musket fire. But on his horse, he was a good target. The story of the

battle says that nine frontiersmen fired at Ferguson at essentially the same time. Seven shots found their marks, and Ferguson was blasted off his horse. In a popular version of his final moments, one of his feet caught in a stirrup, and his horse dragged him several yards. When the frontiersman corralled his horse, he was still alive. South Carolina Colonel James Williams approached and told Ferguson to surrender. In response, Ferguson pulled a pistol and shot Williams. The frontiersman nearby opened fire on Ferguson and killed him. The death of Major Patrick Ferguson broke the resistance of the surviving loyalists

and the battle ground to a halt. The Battle of King's Mountain was an overwhelming and bloody patriot victory. The Frontier Militia Army suffered 28 killed and 62 wounded, while the Loyalist militia suffered 157 killed, 163 wounded, and 698, captured or missing. The combined totals of killed and wounded were huge numbers for the time period, especially for a battle which only featured 2,000 total fighters. One young over-mountain man described the aftermath in language which would sound more familiar during the American Civil War, 80, years later. The dead lay in heaps on all sides, while the groans of the wounded were heard in every direction. An often overlooked fact of the American Revolutionary War is that it was also a civil war, especially in the southern colonies, militia units made up of American colonists who were

loyal to Britain fought in nearly every engagement. At the Battle of Kings Mountain, Major Patrick Ferguson was the only one of the 2,000 combatants who was not an American colonist. After the fight, the men from over the mountains returned to their homes with the knowledge that they were safe from the British Army. The war was done for the over-mountain men, but it was ramping up to a new level for the militias from the Carolinas and Georgia. The victory at King's Mountain had given the Continental Army the spark it needed to keep going. George Washington said, The crude, spirited, hearty, determined volunteers who crossed the mountains served as proof of the spirit and resources. of the country. Thomas Jefferson called the victory the turn of the tide of success.

And now a new Southern Army with a new commander needed to prove him right. General Horatio Gates, commander of the Southern Department, had spent the six weeks between the Battle of Camden and the Battle of King's Mountain, rebuilding the Southern Army. He was at the American base at Hillsborough, North Carolina, collecting the refugees from Camden, local volunteers, and units from the main army who were moving south. but he would not have the chance to lead them. One week after the Battle of Kings Mountain, Congress granted George Washington the power to pick a new southern commander.

Washington chose Major General Nathaniel Green, who had been both quartermaster general and a battlefield commander in the north for the past three years. After the action-packed year of 1777, the war had slowly wound down in the north. In 1780, virtually nothing happened in the northern colonies, which was partially due to the arrival of French troops in July. There was no reason for British commander-in-chief Sir Henry Clinton

to leave New York to battle a reinforced American main army. By October, with the fighting season all but done in the north, Washington could afford to send Green south. While Green was in transit, General Charles Lord Cornwallis abandoned his goal of continuing through North Carolina. With the loss of Major Ferguson and the entire loyalty, militia army, Cornwallis turned the British Southern Army around and marched back down to the area around Camden, South Carolina. In December, Nathaniel Green arrived in North Carolina

to take control of the American Southern Army. He implemented a new strategy, the key to which was Brigadier General Daniel Morgan. Morgan and his Virginia riflemen had been the standouts of the Battle of Saratoga, and he had eventually earned a long overdue promotion from Colonel to Brigadier For the Southern Army, he created an elite unit of light infantry. They were battle-hardened veterans who would carry minimal supplies so they could move fast and strike fast. The core of Morgan's column were 320 Continental soldiers from Maryland and Delaware who had survived and escaped the Battle of Camden.

While the rest of the American Southern Army prepared its winter camp, Morgan's columns stayed in the field with orders to harass the British Army. In the British camp outside Camden, South Carolina, General Cornwallis knew that Morgan was off to the west with a column of soldiers. Cornwallis ordered Lieutenant Colonel Bannister Tarleton to go into the South Carolina back country and deal with Morgan. Tarleton set out with a force of 750 men, which quickly grew to 1,000 as he pursued Morgan. Morgan knew he was being chased, and he continued to lure Tarleton farther away from the British main army. But after about two weeks, Morgan couldn't run any farther. He knew a battle was coming and he needed to find a location that would give him the best advantage.

A captain showed Morgan an area known as Cow Pens, the same ground on which the over-mountain men had camped three months earlier. Morgan thought it was a good place to make a stand. Only a single, narrow dirt road led into the area. It was bordered on the west by a ravine and on the east by a creek. If Morgan could lure Tarleton down the road and into battle, Tarleton would have no choice but to attack with a direct frontal assault. Morgan and his officers devised their battle plan.

It was a complex plan, maybe the most complicated of the war, with a lot of moving pieces. But the three-phase plan didn't ask too much of any one man or any one unit. The night before the fight, Morgan walked through the camp talking to his men, encouraging them and reassuring them that each man just had to do his small part. If each man stayed strong and did his share, he would return home to praise from the old folks and kisses from the girls. In the last couple hours before dawn, on January 17, 1781,

Morgan learned that Tarleton's column was approaching just as expected, straight down the narrow dirt road for a frontal assault. Morgan gave the order to rouse the men and form them into battle lines. For Tarleton, a direct assault came naturally, and he believed he needed to attack immediately. He had received reports that Morgan's column was growing and was now close to 2,000 men. That was almost double the size of Tarleton's force. Tarleton needed to attack before Morgan received even more reinforcements. And based on the most recent messages from General Cornwallis,

Tarleton believed that the British main army was close enough to support him. Lastly, Tarleton believed he had a key advantage. Morgan might have the larger force, but most of it was militia. It had been proven conclusively, most recently at the Battle of Camden, that Patriot militia units would not stand up to a charge from British regular soldiers. So, even though the battlefield was not of Tarleton's choosing, and he only had one option for how to proceed, the frontal assault, he was confident about doing it.

Tarleton had pushed his men hard to get them close to Morgan. While Morgan's column camped for the night, Tarleton marched his column until 10 p.m. He gave them four hours of rest, then started them marching again. By dawn on January 17, 1781, they were approaching cowpens. Morgan's men were already in formation and waiting to start the plan. Around 7 a.m., Tarleton spread most of his units out in a long line of battle. and opened fire with his cannon. Behind him, some of his units were still in disarray

when Tarleton spurred his horse and led his main units forward, just as Morgan had hoped. Morgan used Tarleton's confidence, experience, and expectations against him. Morgan set up three lines of battle. The first line, the closest to the British, was a screen of malicious sharpshooters. Most had rifled muskets which were more accurate

than the muskets of the average soldier. As the British approached, the militiamen opened fire. After the militia's volley, the British fixed bayonets and charged. On cue, the militiamen turned and ran. It looked like the first line of militia was retreating in fear, but the retreat was intentional and it was the first step of Morgan's plan. As the British raced forward, they ran into a second line of Morgan's militiamen. The second line was supposed to stand and fire two or three shots, then fall back.

But that was when Morgan's plan started to falter. With the British shouting and charging with bayonets, the second line fired just one volley, then turned and sprinted toward the rear. As they fell back, they exposed the third and final line of American troops. But the retreats of the first two lines were happening faster and more chaotically than Morgan planned. The British were now approaching the center of the last American line.

The center was anchored by veterans from Maryland and Delaware. On either side were assorted militia units. The line was positioned to maximize the last key advantage of the battleground. Morgan's soldiers stood on the top of a small hill. During the British advance, they had been moving uphill, which further exhausted them as they charged. The weakened British force now faced the strongest American force. But because of Morgan's plan, the first two lines of militiamen were temporarily out of the fight. they were reassembling behind the third line.

Even though the third line was full of veteran fighters, there were only about 350 of them, and they now faced about 800 British soldiers. And while a thousand men were about to slam into each other in the center of the battle, Tarleton saw an opportunity to attack the right flank of the Third American Line. Tarleton sent a battalion of Scottish Highlanders forward

with a unit of cavalry. As the Highlanders marched into battle, they added the piercing wail of their bagpipes to the cacophony of musket fire, cannon fire, galloping horses, and shouting men. The Maryland commander in the center of the American third line saw the movement toward his flank, and he ordered one of his units to reposition to defend against the attack. In the confusion, the unit ended up retreating instead of repositioning. When the other units saw the Maryland unit retreat, they thought a general retreat had been ordered, so they started to fall back as well.

Most of the American third line was now moving down the backside of the hill, and Daniel Morgan was furious. The line had barely engaged the British, and now it was retreating. But the Maryland commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard, assured Morgan that the line was not retreating in panic. The men were falling back in orderly fashion, which turned out to be true. Howard had quickly realized that the accident, retreat could work to their advantage, because the British thought the Americans were genuinely

fleeing the battlefield. The zeal of victory overtook the Highlanders and the other British units, and they charged forward without orders or organization. Howard shouted at his men to turn and prepare to fire. When the oncoming British units were 30 yards from Howard's men, Howard gave the order to fire. The volley cut through the British soldiers. Howard screamed at his men to charge. The American units surged forward and turned the battle into medieval hand-to-hand combat. And while the infantry units mauled each other, Morgan's cavalry, led by George Washington's cousin William, rushed forward to engage Tarleton's cavalry.

Tarleton ordered his cavalry to charge, and he rode forward with some of his officers. But he quickly discovered that most of his cavalrymen had turned and fled. He and his officers were out in front with no support. While Tarleton and his officers battled William Washington's cavalry, American infantrymen closed in and surrounded the British foot soldiers. The battle that had looked like a British victory had reversed itself in an instant. Tarleton and his officers broke free of Washington's cavalry and fled,

along with some scattered infantrymen. All told, about 280 British soldiers escaped, but the rest of Tarleton's column nearly 900 soldiers were out of action. 110 died on the battlefield, 229 were wounded, and 530 were captured or missing. A little more than an hour after it began, the Battle of Cowpens was over. It was the first victory for the American Southern Army, and it finally gave the colonial forces the momentum. After the Battle of Cowpins, Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton and the British survivors returned to the British Southern Army. General Morgan and the American column returned to the American Southern Army.

And over the next six months, everything changed. The British Southern Army chased the American Southern Army up to Virginia, where General Cornwallis eventually made the ill-fated decision to set up a supply base at Yorktown. With the bulk of the British Southern Army out of the way, Nathaniel Green led the American Southern Army back down to South Carolina and Georgia and reclaimed both territories. George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the American Main Army trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown.

With American and French troops blocking the roads and French ships blocking the waterways, Cornwallis had no hope of resupply or reinforcement from Commander-in-Chief Sir Henry Clinton in New York. After a three-week siege, Cornwallis surrendered his army on October 19, 1781, and that was the beginning of the end. Spanish forces controlled the Gulf of Mexico. American and French troops controlled all the territory from Georgia to Canada, and the French fleet patrolled the Atlantic coast. All British forces were stuck in New York, Charleston, and Savannah. In effect, the war was over.

If Britain drained the empire of money and manpower, it still wouldn't be enough to overcome the dramatic reversal of the past 12 months. from the over-mountain men victory at King's Mountain in October 1780 to the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Earlier in 1781, colonial representatives in Congress had ratified an agreement called the Articles of Confederation, which officially turned the colonies into states of a new union. By the end of 1783, the U.S. and Britain had signed a peace treaty, and the British had evacuated New York, Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. With all the British soldiers gone, General George Washington bid farewell to his troops, resigned as commander-in-chief of the

Continental Army, and returned home to Virginia with his military work complete. It was a rare moment in history where a thing which was thought to be impossible actually happened. The colonists won their War of Independence, with indispensable help from the French, the Spanish, and officers from around the world, like Polish engineer Thaddeus Kostchusko, Polish cavalry commander Kazimir Pulaski, and infantry commanders Baron Friedrich von Steuben and Baron Johann de Khab. Of course, the Americans needed a second war against Britain in 1812 to secure their independence, but that didn't take away from the original achievement. In the Revolutionary War from 1776 to 1781, the Americans lost far more battles than they won.

but they won the ones that counted. They prevailed in three pairs of fights, six battles, which kept hope alive and progressively turned the tide of the war in the Americans' favor. If the Americans had lost any one of the three pairs, it is entirely possible that they would have lost the war, and the United States of America would have existed on paper only in one document called the Declaration of Independence. Next time on Legends of the Old West,

we move forward in time about 20 years after the Revolutionary War. The Young American Nation has just purchased millions of square miles of land from France, and explorers are moving westward. Among them are mountain men John Coulter and Jim Bridger. The story of John Coulter is up next, followed by the story of Jim Bridger. That's next time on Legends of the Old West. To binge all the episodes of a new season, and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials,

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts or sign up through the link in the show notes or on our website Black Barrel Media. This series was researched written and produced by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.